“A honeymoon suite,” my new friend Jess repeats, eyes wide. She’s been sitting across the beach bonfire from me for maybe forty minutes and has already become my favorite person at this resort who isn’t French-Canadian. “They actually put you in a honeymoon suite. With a complete stranger.”
“Yep. Rose petals on the bed in the shape of a heart. Champagne chilling on the nightstand. Two towel swans kissing on the bathroom counter.” I take a sip of my cocktail, moving the little umbrella out of the way so I don’t jab myself in the nose again. “And the hotel’s solution was, and I quote, ‘Perhaps you might be willing to share the suite temporarily.’ Temporarily. That was five days ago.”
Mike, Jess’s husband, shakes his head slowly. He’s a big, easy-going guy. The kind who rests his hand on his wife’s knee without thinking about it and laughs with his whole chest. “Sounds like a nightmare to me. Then again, who knows? Could turn out to be a good thing.”
I give him a look. “So far, it’s somewhere in between those two goalposts. It changes by the hour. All I know is, we’re surrounded by romantic decor that was specifically designed to make two people fall in love. While the hotel keeps promising they’re ‘working on alternatives.’” I do air quotes. “At this point I think they’ve given up and are just hoping we won’t sue.”
This gets the laugh I was angling for, and I feel the warm glow of it settle across my shoulders. I’ve known the Tremblays less than a week and Jess and Mike less than an hour, and I’ve already given them the full saga of the double-booking, the festival week that left every hotel on the island full, and the escalating absurdity of a solo vacation that turned into the world’s least romantic honeymoon.
What I haven’t told them is anything real about Alec. Not the amazing kiss on the veranda. Not the humiliating way he pulled away like I’d burned him. Not the fact that last night he told me about his heart condition in the dark while I lay next to him in that same honeymoon bed, close enough to feel the heat of him, but not touching. The double-booking is a funny story about my life. His private details aren’t mine to share. Some things need to stay between us.
Kai wanders over from the steel pan band and drops into our little social circle with his easy grin. The bonfire is crackling low and orange, throwing warm light across the sand and up into the palm fronds overhead. I can feel the heat of it on my bare shins, and somewhere behind me the band shifts into a slower tune, all copper and shimmer.
Colette leans toward me. “You are much better at limbo tonight, chérie. You’ve found your groove.”
I shrug. “Practice makes perfect, but I’ve got a long way to go. At least no limbo poles were destroyed this time.”
I’ve cleared the limbo bar twice tonight at a height that qualifies as genuine progress and not just walking upright undera stick. After the catastrophe on my first attempt, tonight feels like redemption. The kind of small, silly victory that probably shouldn’t make me this happy but does anyway, because I’m on a beach in the Caribbean with sand between my toes and rum in my glass and good people around me.
So why am I missing Alec?
Almost as if I’ve conjured him, I feel a current shift in the air. I glance toward it, peering through the darkness and the small gatherings of people, and then my gaze finds him. A smile builds, and the warmth blooming inside me right now has nothing to do with the two rum cocktails I’ve had tonight.
Alec stands just outside the circle of light with his hands in the pockets of his linen pants, looking about as comfortable as a man waiting for a root canal. Light blue henley pushed to his forearms, his weight settled back on his heels. The firelight catches the hard angles of his face and I feel the recognition low in my stomach, that involuntary pull that happens every time I see him now, whether I want it to or not.
He came to a beach bonfire. Alec Beckett, who doesn’t do fun, who doesn’t do loud and happy, walked across this resort to a party full of strangers. Because I’m here? I want to believe that has something to do with it, but we’re still solidly in friend mode despite the enjoyable evening we shared last night.
I wave him over, keeping it casual, as if my pulse isn’t racing eighty miles an hour. He strolls toward us, and I can sense how quickly he captures the attention of nearly everyone on the beach. “Hey,” I say, hoping I’m not beaming as brightly as my face feels. “I didn’t expect to see you down here.”
He lifts a shoulder. “I wasn’t doing anything else. Thought I’d check things out.”
His gaze is so warm on mine it makes my throat parched. I’m surrounded by people, but Alec’s attention is rooted on me alone. “Everyone, this is Alec. My suitemate.”
I do the introductions around the fire. Colette immediately offers him a conch fritter. Pierre vigorously shakes his hand, but I can see him sizing up Alec like a protective father. Kai gives him a shoulder clap without seeming to notice Alec’s narrowed look. Then Mike nods in greeting, while Jess openly studies Alec, a coy smile on her lips.
“So this is the suitemate,” she says, looking at him with open curiosity.
Alec looks at me in question. I give him my most innocent face. “I may have mentioned the double-booking.”
“She’s been very entertaining about it,” Colette adds.
Alec grunts. “I’m sure she has.”
His dryness gets a surprised laugh from Mike and a delighted nudge from Colette. He sits down at the edge of the group, close but not quite in the circle yet, the way a cat enters a room full of dogs. One cautious inch at a time.
I notice what he reaches for when Pierre passes the snack plate around. Grilled pineapple. Coconut shrimp, but only one. He declines the rum punch and accepts water. He’s being careful, and he doesn’t know I’m watching, and the fact that he’s quietly honoring his health feels like a secret that only he and I share. It’s intimate somehow, and it hits me in the same place that cracked open last night when he told me about his mother’s heart condition.
I give him a small smile before glancing away and taking a sip of my drink.
The limbo bar comes back out when the band picks up tempo, and the group migrates toward it with fourth-drink enthusiasm. Colette goes first, clearing it with a shimmy. Mike folds nearly in half and gets a standing ovation for the effort. Kai does it effortlessly, because apparently being good at everything is just his default setting.
“Your turn,” Jess tells Alec.
His expression is the one I’ve seen on customers who just realized the diner is out of the thing they ordered. Resigned, slightly offended, calculating escape routes. But he stands up. He approaches the limbo bar with his jaw set and his shoulders squared, like he’s walking into a board meeting and not bending under a bamboo pole at a beach party.
He leans back. Every muscle in his body engages at once. His core tightens, his arms lock to his sides, and he bends like he’s determined to clear this bar through sheer abdominal discipline. The henley pulls across his chest and rides up just enough to show a wedge of taut stomach, and I watch the muscles of his torso work under firelight. I am also trying very hard to breathe normally. He clears the bar by maybe a centimeter. There is nothing loose or fluid or limbo-like about it, yet it’s still the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“That was the least relaxed limbo in history,” Kai says, grinning as Alec returns to our group.
